


Separation

by atamascolily



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Animal Metaphors, Daemon Feels, Daemon Separation, Daemon Settling, Daemon Touching, Daemons, Dreams vs. Reality, F/M, Flashbacks, Force Ghost(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:53:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24801148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamascolily/pseuds/atamascolily
Summary: Luke slumped against the bulkhead and closed his eyes. It was the easiest way to shut out his throbbing head, the ache in his wounded leg, and the flickering hints of someone not-quite-substantial from the corner of his vision. If he didn't try too hard, he could almost see Callista silhouetted against the blinking lights of the control panels on the far wall. Or imagine he did, at least.Soft wings brushed against his face, then faded as Vel crawled down his shoulder. Her proboscis tickled his collarbone as she lapped at the sweat-stained edges of his coveralls, which had flopped free in his last desperate scramble from the Sand People into the unlikely sanctuary of theEye of Palpatine's gun room."A moth daemon?"
Relationships: Callista Ming/Luke Skywalker
Comments: 13
Kudos: 11





	Separation

**Author's Note:**

> Celinamarniss wrote [an amazing daemon fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23829331), and it made me want to write a daemon fic, so I did, and it was a lot of fun. Yet another _Children of the Jedi_ remix, because apparently I only have one mode. ;)

Luke slumped against the bulkhead and closed his eyes. It was the easiest way to shut out his throbbing head, the ache in his wounded leg, and the flickering hints of someone not-quite-substantial from the corner of his vision. If he didn't try too hard, he could almost see Callista silhouetted against the blinking lights of the control panels on the far wall. Or imagine he did, at least. 

Soft wings brushed against his face, then faded as Vel crawled down his shoulder. Her proboscis tickled his collarbone as she lapped at the sweat-stained edges of his coveralls, which had flopped free in his last desperate scramble from the Sand People into the unlikely sanctuary of the _Eye of Palpatine_ 's gun room.

"A moth daemon?"

"Yeah." It was an effort to speak aloud through cracked lips, but nodding was worse and he and Vel were woozy enough as it was. "Titan moth." He hadn't known for a long time. They weren't native to Tatooine. 

"I've never met anyone with a moth daemon before." 

"Neither have I." Amusement crept into his voice--any exasperation with his rebellious daemon had long since lost its heat. "She... surprised me, too." 

Normally, Luke didn't talk about Vel to anyone, but there was... a halo of familiarity around the other Jedi, as if they'd known each other their entire lives, impossible as it was. It was as if he was merely reminding her of a shared anecdote from their childhood that she had somehow forgotten in the intervening years, not sharing something new. 

Until Luke was sixteen, Vel was anything and everything she wanted to be--a colorful bowerbird flying alongside the speeder, a tiny ascah burrowing in the sand under his feet as he lingered in the scraps of shade outside Tosche Station, a fork-tongued leema basking in the fierce heat of twin suns while he slaved over 'vaporators in the field. Then, not long after his birthday, he'd woken up one morning to a smooth brown blob divided into twelve lumpy sections--each with a pair of white spiracles and little else. Six stubby legs clustered at the creature's front, six stubby prolegs dangled off the back, with fake eyes lumped at the rear to diguise the smaller true ones at the opposite end. 

Luke was devastated. He'd expected Vel's settled form to be more dramatic... something fast and flashy, like Biggs's Aethri, a crystalline falcon, or a striped wolf like his father. After _years_ of waiting for Vel to settle, long after Fixer and Camie and the other kids in the Anchorhead crowd, to find his other-half a fleshy lump like a Hutt was a betrayal of the highest order. 

Far too many screaming fights later, he stopped asking her why. But he never stopped wondering what had pushed her over the edge like that, to change without so much as asking his opinion on the matter. 

Now permanently saddled with the nickname "Wormie," Luke bore his peers' teasing as best he could. They were just telling it like it is, weren't they? Vel _was_ a worm, after all. It wasn't fair for him to take out his frustrations on her for it. She was the way she was, and so was he, and there was no help for it. He loved her too much to be angry at her once the initial hurt had faded. 

She still changed, though. Not as much as she had before, but there'd be times she'd go all still for a while, and shed her skin a few days later, and then she'd be a different color for a while, or bedecked with thousands of fuzzy hairs that bristled when he stroked her. Once she'd been pale green with a thousand blue-and-orange curved horns that oozed sticky ichor when she was annoyed. 

Once they got to Hoth, Vel retreated into his front jacket pocket and refused to emerge--which was fair enough; the cold chilled them both to their bones, and there was no point subjecting both of them to it. She'd stayed there during his entire time on Dagobah, too--though she'd whisper sly comments to him when Yoda wasn't around to overhear. 

After Bespin, she'd stopped talking altogether and spun a silken cocoon around herself, pale and still as death yet clearly alive in some suspended state of hibernation. He'd feel for her in the night to make sure she was still there with him, that he hadn't lost her along with his hand and his innocence in the air shaft below Cloud City--a lump, a failure, but still precious, still _his_ \--the only thing left in a world where nothing was solid and no one (except for maybe Leia) could be trusted. 

It was only a year later, after he'd pieced together his new lightsaber, that he'd felt an unfamiliar frisson down his spine as something twitched in his pocket. He'd looked down at his jacket and there was Vel, wriggling free of her silken enclosure in a shape he'd never seen before. 

Luke's jaw dropped as she crawled out onto the table onto the handle of his lightsaber, her crumpled wings unfolding in tawny swirls of brown, black, and orange, with pockets of iridescent silver patches scattered about. Once again, his worldview was upended, and nothing would ever be the same again. 

He'd been wrong about who she was--who _they_ were--his entire life. 

He hadn't known. How could he? 

"Why didn't you tell me?" he hissed, when he was capable of speech again. 

Vel brought her new forelegs up to brush her face, and blinked at him fuzzily. "There were things I had to do on my own," she declared loftily. "So did you." Massive wings--each the size of his fist--spread in the air, casting intricate shadows on the wall as they dried. "And you never asked." 

So that had been a shock--for him, for everyone. Leia's daemon Aarial had his feathers fall out from grief and shock after destruction of Alderaan and had come back brown for _years_ , only to molt back to white again when they were on Hoth, and Han had made snarky comments about pigeons for weeks afterwards. But this was different: not just feathers, but _form_ shifting into something new and entirely different. 

Eventually, Luke had adjusted to the change, and so had his friends in the Rebellion, and then it was as if Vel always been this way from the beginning. And for the first time in his life, Luke had felt confident in facing the world as he-- _they_ \--truly were: utterly and wholly themselves. 

Explaining it all to Callista now made the entire journey sound so logical, so inevitable, so _obvious_ in hindsight. From the glint in her eyes and the curve of her smile, she knew the parts he'd left out without having to ask.

She knew him so well, almost as well as Vel did, he thought. And though he trusted her with his life, he barely knew anything about her prior to her time on board this ship. Not that it mattered, but--

"Tell me about your daemon," he said, without thinking. 

She didn't move but he might as well have struck her. Her shock rippled outward like pebble tossed in a pond, only to be replaced by deep, abiding grief. There was no daemon at her side in the darkness. She stood alone, as Ben had always appeared after his death, a lingering fragment of what had once been a greater whole. 

Blood drained from Luke's face. Vel clucked at his faux pas, wings vibrating in embarrassment and more than a little fear. She'd been doing her best to pretend they _weren't_ talking to a ghost, and he'd just blown it. 

"I'm sorry," he said quickly. Too quickly. "I didn't mean to--" 

"Don't," she said, raising a hand as if to ward off any sympathy. "Lyo-lyok's been gone for thirty years. He died when I did. I... miss him, that's all." 

Luke couldn't even imagine her loneliness. A year without Vel's wry voice in his ear had been worse than he'd ever thought possible--and she'd been right there in his pocket the entire time. She and Luke had risked their lives so many times over the years, but they'd always taken comfort in the fact that when their time came, they'd die together, and pass on together. 

But Callista had sacrificed even that to stay with the _Eye_ and ensure it would never wake again. He didn't know how she bore her daemon's absence so calmly, sitting here with Luke and Vel now. 

"I was afraid he'd settle as a creature of the sea - a tsaelke, perhaps, or a cy'een, trapping us both on a single world unless we could afford the expense of float-baths to carry us out to the stars." Callista chuckled, a low, rich laugh, and Vel relaxed enough to resume her ministries on Luke's collar. "Turned out, I needn't have worried. He became a glory goose, as adept in the air as he was on the water--and no poor walker on land, either, though he grumbled at the necessity." 

As Callista spoke, Luke could almost _see_ Lyo-lyok hovering beside her, the daemon's gray wings the same shade as her eyes. For a moment, the memory was real to him as she was--and then Callista sighed, and there was nothing there anymore, only the flashing lights of the panels behind her. 

"I'm sorry," Luke repeated, numb with horror and his own inadequacy. It wasn't anywhere close to enough to acknowledge the extent of such a loss, but it was the only response he had. 

"We knew the risks," she said simply. She met his gaze calmly enough--was it his imagination or was she trembling? Or was that the pain meds wearing off at last? "I chose to stay behind. He went--beyond. Wherever it is we go when we die. And one day, when this ship is finally destroyed, I'll join him." 

_No,_ Luke wanted to say. _You can't. I don't want to lose you_ \--but Vel shook her head in warning, cutting him off before he could speak such dangerously charged words aloud. 

He listened to her for once in his life and let the words go, lost and unspoken into the still, recyled air of the chamber. 

Just like poor Lyo-lyok. 

***

In the throne room on the second Death Star, the Emperor's daemon sidled forward from its place besides Palpatine's chair, rubbing against the folded edges of his robe with liquid grace. She had four legs when she started the movement--only to lurch forward as they abruptly contracted and another four popped out of her torso. Her fur shrank before vanishing entirely. So did her head, morphing into a round blob with eight black beady eyes whirling in every direction at once. 

Luke stared. Vel hissed. The Emperor's daemon wasn't a sight hound, like he'd assumed--like she was in all the propaganda holos. Either she'd never settled, not in all this time, or--or--

"You see?" Palpatine said as his daemon leapt nimbly into his lap, a liquid rope of limbless scales leering at them with a pink, forked tongue. "You know nothing of what is possible with the power of the Dark Side." 

Luke had no words. Both he and Vel were struck dumb by the Emperor's daemon's casual display, impossible as it was. There had to be some sort of trick. Daemons didn't change again after they'd settled. There was no way the Dark Side could undo that--could it? 

Vel had changed, though. Not as quickly or as dramatically, but she, too, had shifted her form long after Luke had thought her settled for good. Maybe it was possible that--

"Maybe she settled as a changeling," Vel whispered in Luke's ear, echoing his own thoughts. "Or maybe the Dark Side really is that-- _unnatural_ \--" 

"It's you who are wrong, my young apprentice," Palpatine crooned, turning away to gaze at the expanse of ships and stars through the viewports. "About a great many things..." 

Luke's jaw clenched. Perched on his shoulder, Vel flapped her massive wings as if to attack, but didn't move--

And then with no transition, he was standing over his father's crumpled body, gasping in shock as ruler and daemon descended the stairs, laughing in triumph, urging Luke to give in to his hatred once and for all and finish Vader off. 

Luke took a deep, shuddering breath. Vel, on his shoulder again, held perfectly still. "You've failed, your highness," he said. "We are Jedi, like our father before us." And he cast the lightsaber aside as Vel nodded in satisfaction. 

Palpatine's face twisted in disgust. "So be it." He raised his hands, and everything happened at once. 

Luke screamed and crumpled to the floor, every nerve in his body on fire. Vel screamed as the Emperor's shadowy daemon leapt forward and snatched her out of the air, dragging her away from Luke. 

The lightning stopped, but the screaming didn't. Luke's lungs were bursting and he was going to snap apart any second now. A memory stirred, distant and faint. _Feel the Force flow within you,_ Yoda had said, over and over again on Dagobah. Luke reached for that small, still spot inside him, and-- 

It didn't work. The nameless daemon returned to the Emperor's side and oozed up the outstretched hand onto Palpatine's arm. Now it was a pink, shifting blob with no discernible features except for the distinctly canine teeth still clenched firmly around Vel's wings. 

Luke was on his knees, hands clasped over his chest as he gasped for breath. All his muscles had seized up, and he was as boneless as his enemy's daemon. " _Vel_ \--" 

Palpatine met Luke's gaze calmly, his yellow eyes implacable as he accepted the shaking Titan moth from his daemon's proffered mouth. 

The horror of the contact--that slimy, silky _wrongness_ \--flooded through Luke, and he shuddered. The shaking turned into a seizure as the Emperor wrapped both hands around Vel, pinning her in place. She fought him as best she could, wings beating frantically in a desperate bit for freedom. But she had no weapons and no teeth, and Palpatine was too strong, and Luke was too weak to get up off the floor and save her. 

The Emperor smiled, his triumph complete. "And now, my young Jedi, you will die." 

And he began to pull his hands apart, taking Vel's wings with them.

Vel shrieked--the highest, most piercing cry Luke had ever heard from her, not even when he'd crashed his speeder and nearly killed them both when they were six and hadn't learned to steer. Luke slammed his head against the floor at the agony. The impact cleared his head enough for a second, enough to crawl a meter closer the Emperor, but it wasn't enough, he wasn't going to make it in time to save her. The pain built and built to a magnitude he'd never thought possible, and he realized they were truly going to die here. 

Distantly, Luke heard himself calling for his father, begging, pleading for help. His father was the only one who could save him now. His father, just a few meters away, watching his son tortured to death in front of him. His father, who had lost his daemon when he'd become Darth Vader--who knew exactly what it was like to feel the other half of your soul torn apart in front of you--

"Father--Father, _please_ \--" 

"Luke? Luke. _Luke_ \--" 

He woke, or thought he did. The pain vanished, except for where Callista knelt beside him, her nails digging into his left arm from the intensity of her grip. But Vel was curled up unconscious on his right shoulder, and his leg didn't hurt, so maybe this was still a dream. 

He was too distracted by the heavy braid of hair draped around Callista's neck, the ragged tips dangling into the space between them, to care about reality. If the rich, musky scent of the sea filled the space between them was a dream, he'd take it. 

"Are you all right?" 

Luke sat up, or tried to. Everything in his vision was sharp and hyper-focused instead of blurry, which was another sign none of this was real, but he moved slowly and cautiously all the same, careful not to dislodge Vel from her perch. Let her sleep. Force knew she needed it. 

Besides, he wanted a private moment with Callista. A whole lot of private moments, actually. 

"No," he said after a moment, realizing he'd never answered the question. "It was a nightmare. A memory."

"Do you want to talk about it?" 

Oddly, he did. She settled down beside him as he recounted the dreams, witnessing the old wounds with compassion and tightly drawn anguish in her gray eyes where appropriate.

"That's horrible," she said, when he fell silent at last. "No wonder you have nightmares. But your father saved you--?" 

Luke nodded. "He shook Palpatine until he let go of Vel, and tossed him down the reactor shaft." There had been lots of those in the room for some reason, maybe because the Death Star was still under construction. Or maybe it was supposed to be that way, sterile and cold and brutally functional, like the Empire itself. 

"He saved you. Both of you." 

"Yes." 

Callista looked over at Vel, still snoozing contentedly on Luke's other side. "She healed well. I can't see any scars." 

"My father stopped her before Palpatine completely tore her wings off," Luke said. "Nothing bacta couldn't fix." 

"So that's how the Empire fell," Callista mused. "Because Vader--Anakin--your father loved you." 

"Yes, and no. I mean, yes, he saved me. And we won at Endor that day. But that didn't mean the war was over. It still isn't, not really. We're still fighting with all the scattered pieces that haven't gotten the message. Not to mention--Palpatine's legacy." 

He didn't mention the _Eye_ , but its existence hovered between them, unspoken and threatening. He coughed and quickly pressed on.

"And the Emperor's daemon got away. I don't know how--by the time I realized what was going on, there was no sign of her. At first I thought she'd died with her master, but--she was at Byss, when Palpatine came back in a clone body. She laughed at me." 

He closed his eyes at the memory--still sharp, still painful. He'd never even known her name. 

"I still don't know how she did it," he said when he could speak again. "She must have transformed herself into something small, something that could survive in the vacuum of space when the Death Star blew up. She's dead now--I made sure of that the second time--but Endor wasn't the end. It was only the beginning of the end, and we haven't gotten there yet." 

"My master Djinn Altis used to say, 'Count no being happy until they die,'" Callista said wryly. "'And don't assume they're dead until you've seen the body.'" 

"Sounds like good advice to me." There was no Vel to stop him from asking things he shouldn't. "And what about after death? Is there happiness then?" 

Silence. Luke knew he should stop, but he pressed on in spite of himself with reckless abandon. "D'you think Lyo-lyok could be--out there somewhere? Waiting for you?" 

"No, Luke." There was such gentle compassion in her voice at his efforts, more than his rudeness deserved. "He's gone. He died a long time ago." Another long pause. "Don't give me hope." 

She pushed back a loose strand of hair that had fallen into his eyes, tucked it away behind his ears. The already fuzzy line between dreams and reality crumbled to pieces the contact. Luke was beyond caring. Her touch was real and solid, not like a ghost at all. His body buzzed and thrummed, like a plucked string.

How long had it been since anyone had touched him? Cray had tended to him after the concussion in the _Huntbird_ , and he'd hugged Han and Leia before he left, but... 

He reached out and grabbed for her wrist, clumsily mashing his lips against her knuckles. She shuddered and swayed, but didn't pull away. 

"Luke," she moaned, and that decided it. Especially since Vel wasn't awake to argue. 

"Callista," he said in reply, and pulled her hand down to his shoulder, guiding her fingers across Vel's thorax down to the puffy abdomen, the way Vel always liked to be stroked. 

Vel stirred at the touch, but didn't wake. The creeping, insistent, memory of Palpatine's violation vanished, replaced by the thrill of _rightness_ at the contact--

He kissed her then, tangling her braid in his fingers. He retained just enough sense of self-preservation to keep Vel from being crushed in the press of their bodies as he closed the remaining distance between them, pushing her back down onto the floor.

" _Luke_ ," she said, the last coherent words from either of them for quite some time. 

*** 

"Well," Callista said later, propping herself up on one elbow beside him. "Shall we find some better memories to explore? Ones that won't bring nightmares?" 

"That one just now was a memory I wouldn't mind exploring again," Luke said, nuzzling her neck with his nose. 

She laughed--rich, hearty, rolling, and alive, and his heart thrilled at the sound. They were going to find a way to save her before they blew up the ship so he never had to be without her. Vel would probably think it was a terrible idea, but she'd come around. 

And if Luke and Callista's exertions hadn't woken her yet, nothing would. 

Callista offered him a hand. "Shall we go?" 

He took it, and they went. 

***

They stood together on the edge of the raft-fleet in the southern reaches of Chad, watching the tsaelkes dance amidst the waves, when Luke heard a faint bugle in the distance. He looked up to see a dark gray blur descending rapidly out of the sky towards them, plunging down towards the surface of the dark sea. 

" _Lyo_!" Callista screamed, and dove headfirst into the water, as the glory goose skated in for a landing. Woman and daemon met halfway, laughing and splashing each other with frantic joy, before paddling back to the raft, Sprawled wet and dripping on the deck, Callista glowed with a radiance Luke had never seen before, her aura of melancholy washed away by the daemon beside her. 

"Lyo, this is Luke," Callista said by way of introductions. The goose honked and shook himself, huffing that he knew that already, Callie, he wasn't stupid, _anyone_ could see it was Luke Skywalker, the last of the Jedi knights, and she was sweet on him, _honestly_ \--

But he let Luke stroke his long gray neck without complaint, delicately preening them back into place when Luke pulled his hand away. 

"Lyo, where have you been all this time?" Callista said, burying her face in the daemon's broad back. "I've missed you so much.

"I could say the same of you, Callie," the daemon said testily. "I've been _here_ , waiting for you--where have _you_ been?" 

"I'm sorry, Lyo, I did what I had to--" 

"You always do," said the goose, and there was no criticism there, only love so raw and unfiltered Luke's heart ached. "The edge of the world, the edge of the world, where the sea meets sky, and the sky meets the sea, that's where you'll always find me--" 

And with another honk, he spread his wings and pushed off into the air, circling heavily overhead for a moment before veering out across the open water again towards the setting sun. 

Callista stood and calmly watched him go. "Luke?" she said after a moment, sensing his incredulity. "What's wrong?" 

"You can be apart without pain," Luke said, wonder warring with disbelief at the strangeness of the encounter. Yes, this was a dream, but-- 

"Of course we can," Callista said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "It was part of our trials. You mean, your teachers didn't--" 

"No," Luke said softly. "It didn't--I guess it didn't come up," he finished lamely. "All Yoda told me was that I had to face my father, and that was enough. I guess he thought--" 

He looked down at Vel, still asleep, missing all of this, thought about her transformation, that silent inner journey she'd taken apart from him. _There were things I had to do on my own. So did you,_ she'd said. 

"Oh," he said softly, as comprehension dawned. "Oh. I guess she--we did. I didn't know. We never tried... being apart like that."

Callista patted his arm companionably. "Don't worry about it. I think the two of you have done splendidly under the circumstances." 

"You're so calm about this," he said, gesturing to the horizon where Lyo-lyok had vanished. 

She shot him a puzzled look. "Of course, I am. I told you, we were looking for good memories to share. Don't you have some of your own you to show me?"

Somehow they ended up at the rock outcropping near Beggar's Canyon where Luke had always gone when he wanted to be alone, watching a troop of mounted Sand People riding single file in the distance. 

"Nobody's ever seen their daemons," he said, passing Callista the macrobinoculars. "At least, if they have, they didn't survive to tell the tale." 

"Maybe they don't have daemons," she said. She studied the line of banthas intently. "Or at least not a form that's recognizable to the eye." 

Luke gestured towards the passing figures. "Some people say the banthas are their daemons because they're so protective of them, and you never seem 'em far from each other." 

"You don't believe that." 

He shook his head. "Seems strange for everybody's daemon to take the same form, even if theirs work differently from ours. No telling what the Sand People look like, but I doubt they're all identical under their veils and masks." 

"So what do you think then?" 

"I think," Luke said slowly, struggling to put his thoughts into words, "that their daemons are part of the land. Bound to the land in ways that ours aren't. I think that's why they're so angry at us." 

"No wonder they hate being on a ship so much," Callista said. "It's so different from everything they're used to. And to be ripped away from a _part_ of themselves like that... I'd be angry, too." 

Luke rubbed the bruise on his temple where the gaderiffi stick had clubbed him. The fact that the _Eye_ 's automated systems hadn't managed to brainwash the Sand People was oddly reassuring--it meant the Will was fallible. Luke had enough problems with the indoctrinated Gamorreans without tossing Imperial-conditioned Sand People into the mix. 

"Personally, I agree with them about the _Eye_ ," he said. "I only wish we could channel their destruction into helping us instead of shorting out the life-support systems. Between them and the Jawas, we may not make it to Belsavis."

He thought for a minute. "Maybe I can ask Threepio to try and explain to them," he said after a moment. 

"Will that work?" Callista asked. "I thought you said they didn't respond to diplomacy." 

"As long as he's out of their direct reach, it's worth a shot," Luke said. "And it'll stop him hovering over me." 

"I think it's endearing how much he cares." 

"Droids are full of surprises," Luke agreed. Vel stirred on his shoulder, and he shuddered. When she woke up, this interlude would be over, and that was punishment enough. He didn't need a lecture on top of that. 

Too late. She was awake now and furious, her tawny wings batting at his face, blocking Callista and the Tatooine desert from view. "Luke, you _idiot_ , wake up, wake up--we don't have time for this--they're going to kill Cray if we don't do something--" 

_That_ registered, bleary as he was. He stumbled forward down a long tunnel, filled with the sensation of coming up to the surface from the bottom of the ocean, his chest aching from holding his breath for so long. " _Cray_!" 

His head burst through the surface and he woke again, this time for real, gasping and sweating, Vel hovering beside him on his tattered bunk in the medical unit. There was no sign of Callista, only Threepio, coming over now that his sensors had detected Luke awake at last. 

"You _idiot_ ," Vel said, sagging with relief on a nearby chair, heedless of the protocol droid's fussing. "Let's go!" 

***

Everything went faster after that. Too fast. Soon enough he was speeding away in an escape pod against his will, just in time to watch the explosion. Soon he was stumbling across the cargo bay of the _Hunter's Luck_ , Vel fluttering raggedly beside him, pulling Cray out of the other pod. She'd decided to live, after all. 

But even as Luke tugged at the crash webbing to release her, he realized something was wrong. 

"Luke," Vel whispered in horror. " _Look!"_

Luke's stomach flipped and he wanted to vomit. Cray was still alive, still breathing, curled in a fetal position inside the pod. But there was no sign of Miki, big-eyed and fuzzy, clinging to her side like he usually did. None at all. 

_Cray--what have you done--_

She stirred beneath his touch, and opened her eyes. They were grey. 

And then he _knew_. 

Luke yanked her restraints off and flung himself at her, heedless of his own injuries and Vel's yowl of surprise. The same way Callista had flung herself at Lyo-lyok in the dream-vision on Chad, miraculously restored despite all odds--

Callista's mouth met his, greedy and grasping, and they clung to each other as if nothing else mattered, nothing else existed, just the two of them, united at last, beyond all separation--

Someone--Han, he thought, or maybe it was Neo up his sleeve--coughed behind them. Awkward silence fell as Luke and Cray turned to face their audience.

Leia and Aarial squinted at them. "That--isn't Cray," Leia said after a moment. "Is it?" Aarial added, his feathers puffed out in alarm and shock. 

Even Mara--who Luke had always assumed was beyond shock--was unnerved. Her expression didn't change, but Medes' head was spinning in circles, unable to look directly at the human without a daemon, yet unable to look away. 

"No," Luke said softly, the implications only now hitting him. "Callista? What happened" 

"She stepped aside," Callista said softly. "At the end, she could have run, saved herself and left me, but she didn't. She wanted to stay with Nichos. Wanted to--be on the other side with him. And she offered--" 

Luke thought of his brilliant student, so strong and proud, repairing electronics while her lemon-furred daemon helped with his little clever hands. How the two of them had re-built Nichos in droid form, programmed him with all of Nichos's memories in a desperate attempt to save him from slow, inevitable death. How lovingly Miki's long fingers had stroked the green and gleaming exoskeleton of the scarab beetle they'd constructed for Nichos in Xi'an's stead, after the daemon had vanished when Nichos had...crossed over. Or tried to. 

Callista's hands closed over his. "She said if she couldn't be happy, then at least you could be, Luke--" 

Luke swayed, closed his eyes. This wasn't anything like the happy ending he'd dreamed of. Not like any happy ending at all. 

"And Miki?" he whispered. 

"Gone," she said. "Wherever they went, they went there together. On the other side." 

She was crying now. Even as Luke blinked, and bent down to comfort her, Vel was already there, licking away the tears in soft, silent apology. 

***

It didn't last. Luke knew in his heart he was fighting the inevitable, but he and Vel were determined to try, to make it work between the three of them. The unsettled stares from the students at the academy at the daemonless woman who walked among them were bad enough, but Callista hadn't only lost her daemon--she'd lost the Force, too. Two losses too many. She no longer fit in this world, in this place, in her skin. And there was nothing they could do to help her. 

"I have to find him, Luke," Callista insisted over and over again, pacing back and forth across his bedroom in the Great Temple while Vel whirled in circles over Luke's head. "I hear him calling my name in my dreams. He's out there, I know it. I just have to find him." 

"Callista," Luke said, as gently as he could, reaching out to embrace her. "Lyo-lyok is gone. You told me so yourself." 

"Stop telling me what to do," she snapped, thrusting his hands away. "I'm not one of your students. I'm not even a Jedi anymore." 

"Callista--" 

Not long afterward, Luke and Vel watched her pick her way down the Temple steps, to the landing platform where the ship waited to take her away. Her departing figure silhouetted against the sunset wasn't like Vel slipping away from him after Bespin, that awful emptiness during their year of separation and yet--and yet-- 

"Why does it have to hurt so much?" he whispered. 

"I came back," Vel said softly. "Maybe she will, too." 

Vel, like Luke, was a terrible liar. 

"No," he corrected, shaking his head, knowing his was right and hating himself for no longer being able to pretend. "She won't."

*** 

They only saw her once after that, on Nam Chorios at the conclusion of the Ashgad affair. She strode across the base of the Bleak Point gun station towards the waiting freighter, and even though her face was obscured by the twilight gleam of the sun, he knew it was Callista from the way she carried herself, so awkward yet graceful in that tall, long-legged body, daemonless and alone. 

Of course, he thought, his heart leaping in his ribs at the sight of her, she could have found Lyo-lyok a long time ago, and he would never know, not if she could separate from the goose daemon like she had in their dream on the _Eye of Palpatine_. Like he and Vel could, after Callista had shown them it was possible to be apart in this way and survive unscathed. 

The figure turned back as if catching sight of them for the first time, and paused. 

Before Luke could react, Vel spread her wings and fluttered across the gap between them. Callista glanced upward sharply as the moth daemon circled overhead, careful not to touch her, before swinging back towards Luke. 

Luke raised his hand up to Callista in a gesture of farewell as Vel returned to her usual perch on his right shoulder. 

Callista relaxed then, and raised a hand to him in wordless reply. They stared at each other for a long moment, before she turned and continued on her way. 

Luke and Vel watched her walk up the ramp and into the freighter. Watched it sail away into the sunset. Just like Lyo-lyok in the dream. 

"She'll find her own way, somehow," Luke said, releasing Callista at last, as he had not been able to do before. "And we'll find ours." 

"Together," Vel agreed. 

He reached up and stroked her abdomen fondly. "Yes, we will. Together."

**Author's Note:**

> Titan moths are a sci-fi analogue of the Atlas moth, _Attacus atlas_ , a giant silkmoth from Asia, with multiple instars (caterpillar growth forms) and silken cocoons, although the details are very different than what I sketched out for Vel. Her initial form as "Wormie" is based on the fifth instar brown form of a _Papilio_ swallowtail caterpillar, with other instars based on woolly slug moth ( _Megalopyge opercularis_ ) and hickory horn devil caterpillars ( _Citheronia regalis_ ). Some species of butterflies do enjoy sweat and tears, along with urine, soil, dung, and/or carrion - it's a documented behavior called puddling. 
> 
> Callista's daemon based on a barnacle goose ( _Branta leucopsis_ ) though it's closer in size to a Canadian goose ( _B. canadensis_ ). Lyo-lyok is named after the goose in T.H. White's _The Once and Future King_ who schools King Arthur in avian wisdom. 
> 
> Palpatine's daemon is a changeling--the Star Wars equivalent of a Ditto from Pokemon--though it's unclear if she was always this way, or if Palpatine transformed her using Sith alchemy. She usually wears the form of a Naboo sight hound in public and in propaganda holos. 
> 
> Cray's daemon Miki is a slow loris ( _Nycticebus_ sp.). Nichos's daemon Xi'an is a scarab beetle (family Scarabaeidae). 
> 
> Yes, Leia's daemon Aarial is a pigeon (also known as a rock dove IRL) though this version is a cross between true pigeons (family Columbidae) and ptarmigans ( _Lagopus_ spp.). Han's daemon Neo is a black-footed ferret ( _Mustela nigripes_ ). Lando's daemon isn't shown directly, but for the record, I imagine it as a superb lyrebird, _Menura novaehollandiae_ , because Lando is just that fabulous. 
> 
> Mara's daemon Medes is based on a burrowing owl ( _Athene cunicularia_ ). His name is a shout-out to Merlin's owl Archimedes, also from _The Once and Future King_.


End file.
